S-NET

Mission Photos:

S-NET is a mission of four nanosatellites to verify the SLink payload and demonstrate intersatellite communication on a sophisticated level. An increasing numbers of communication entities participating in the network relates to a larger test bed for algorithm and verification. However for a nanosatellite based demonstration mission, four satellites present the best cost-benefit-ratio. Four entities enable six independent communication links while three satellites only make three links possible. Furthermore a multi-hop communication can only be realized with a number of at least four nodes.

Mission Objectives:

demonstration of multipoint intersatellite communication

verification of communication protocols

analysis of nanosatellite formation

demonstration of feasibilty of nanosatellite platform for communication purpose

Role of SLR:

The laser ranging should support the intersatellite communication experiments by
determining the relative distance and correlating with the transceiver signal travel time.

Four satellites are deployed with interval of 10s from upper stage with a high precision
mechanism. The deployment parameters (distribution of velocity and direction) shall be
verified by analyzing SLR data.

The orbital drift behaviour of the constellation shall be analyzed in the early orbit insertion
phase to propagate the formation drift.